


oz, the great and terrible

by handschuhmaus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Moral Ambiguity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-02-26 04:09:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13227786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: Power corrupts.Anakin Skywalker gets caught up between what he should do and think, his own inclinations, and not wanting what he thought he did.The Queen and the Slave--what a strange match.





	1. Chapter 1

At nine years old Anakin, who has hitherto known only slavery and sand and the unyielding heat of binary suns, does not even, really, understand the concept of being queen of an entire planet. In fact, from experience, the most readily imaginable form of that title is some Hutt managing mining or industry on a--well, he's only ever heard of it being done to moons, but it could probably happen on a planet too. Probably.--planet with thousands of slaves. He knows that it's not actually the status quo in the wider galaxy, but it is hard to slot the concept of being ruled and the concept of being free together when you are nine years old and have never been away from slavery until now. 

But it's not like he's ever had that difficult of a time grasping and running with a new situation...

* * *

At nineteen years old, having spent the greater part of the previous decade on the capital world of Coruscant, Anakin doesn't, actually, comprehend how galactic politics can function. He is aware, more or less, of a vast underworld on the capital planet, encompassing both nobodies like he used to be and gangsters more like Hutts even when they aren't the giant slug-like things, and all the in-between; and his lessons have tried their best to sketch the vast, yet limited, reach of the Jedi Order. Coruscant, a world that couldn't survive without myriad forms of support from its underlings, a city whose sprawl defied description; glitz, glamour, power, politics and the reassuring presence of the Jedi--and yet rust and waste and overdoses, crime and sordid underground passion. It couldn't be a greater contrast to Tatooine, even if it no longer (did it ever?) has the rainy weather Naboo experienced.

But nevermind that, don't dwell on not understanding why it works. Just see how the outside operates and see if you can get running. 

Padme is back in his life, no longer queen but now senator, for her beautiful wet planet. The only other Naboo native Anakin knows here on Coruscant is another, former senator, and now the Chancellor.

And the Jedi attrition rate has just gone up again, with the man who taught Qui-Gon Jinn leaving the Order. That is truly unthinkable for most Jedi, and the consensus of Temple rumor is that he has been Turned to the Dark side. In which case there is no coming back to the good and the light. In his heart of hearts, Anakin doesn't find the concept of leaving so foreign--after all, this is the child who helped to save Naboo, this is the young man with whom Qui-Gon entrusted his Padawan in a dying wish against Yoda's advice, this is the boy who left his mother and slavery and everything he had ever known at age nine. 

He hasn't ever gotten Shmi out of slavery, he hasn't been back. The Jedi won't end slavery in the Outer Rim; it just doesn't matter to them, and Obi-Wan, poor Obi-Wan (Anakin, growing up with a single mother, has always been somewhat attuned to other's emotions, and he can tell that while the man is not tempted by romantic attachment, something sewn deeply into his soul was torn out when his Master died.), only counsels him against attachment. And against interfering in the lives of beings whom the Council, in its aged wisdom, has not deemed worthy of Jedi attention.

Perhaps, he has thought darkly time and again at obscure hours of the night, the real law of the galaxy is rule or be ruled. Thus thinks the boy who was going to free the slaves, the boy who feels as if natural compassion has been drained out of him by the Jedi training, to be (badly and incompletely) replaced with a sort of mechanical hydraulic fluid. Not that Anakin doesn't like droids. But everyday machines don't have those inconvenient emotions Yoda cited in deeming him unworthy and would like to see drummed out of him.

There is something decidedly split--ambivalent, yes, but further: a chasm between the sides, spanned by the slenderest rope of feeling--in his feelings about the Order to which he belongs. He must master it, must not disappoint Mom, and Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon's spirit, Padme, even Chancellor Palpatine, who has "taken an interest in him". But he doesn't _like_ it, not fully, for the Jedi don't, generally, honest to goodness, like him. Oh, Obi-Wan has come around, ever though he seemed an interloper and unwanted, disliked legacy at first. To everyone else, though, Anakin is a strange thing, not quite wholly Jedi and yet, somehow, supposedly, the most quintessential Jedi of all. He is outsider, come not from the carefully modulated creche but from a world of sand and blazing sun and the bloodthirsty clamor of the dregs of what passes for civilization. It's enough to make him want to escape at times.

Escape he does, some days. Tries badly to play dejarik with the kriffing Chancellor of the Republic some evenings the man has free. (He probably shouldn't be imposing, no, but Force if he doesn't feel more accepted there among power and luxury than in the Temple. It's the man who regards him kindly, sympathetically, and the only note of wonder at his strangeness is more similar to Mom's sometimes than anything he gets in the Temple.) It hasn't happened but perhaps five times in all these years. Goes ducking around the friendlier corners of the underworld, trying to decide whether he can risk getting into a race.

* * *

Padme is beautiful, stunning. It's not like any other relationship in his life; he remembers her kindness well and finds her, yes, attractive. Somewhere behind the part of him that wants to rush in and live a little, he wonders if it isn't a dangerous attraction, like fire to fuel, as apt to consume as to renew.

And he willfully ignores the sour notes as he does rush in and feels a splendid thrill with every moment of attention she gives him.

* * *

It's then he starts dreaming.

There's more of his Tatooine upbringing than of the Jedi teachings in his attitude towards them. He's never been sure he believes in the prophetic dreams they sometimes believed in, but he can't escape the panicked feeling that what's happening to his mother is dreadfully, awfully real. For that, he doesn't go to the Jedi, as perhaps he should. He asks Padme about the attitude of the Naboo towards dreams, but she laughs it off, tells him she's uninterested in old superstitions when there is a more truthful explanation: just the random permutations of the things stuffed into his brain. He probably ought to ask Obi-Wan.

Instead, he asks the Chancellor, because they do have an evening--the Senate on short holiday recess, high society reluctant to hold large galas due to a communicable and unpleasant flu. 

"What sort of dreams?" he asks intently.

"That my mom has been captured by Tuskan Raiders and is being tortured, vividly." Anakin describes, sounding like a little boy again.

Palpatine looks concerned and doesn't speak for several moments. "Would you like me to ask one of my contacts to look into it, if possible?"

"I--didn't mean to ask you the favor, but, yes, if that's possible." Anakin pauses, then sounds the depths with his doubts, "I'm not sure I should believe it. But it keeps happening and it feels so real."

"It may be worth the attention. Dreams are odd things, and--well, I am certainly no Jedi, but I am familiar with some of the lore--sometimes the Force works in strange ways."

* * *

There isn't time for him to hear back from the Chancellor, isn't even time for anyone to travel to Tatooine from Coruscant if dispatched by the morning after the conversation, before the Council assigns the Kenobi-Skywalker pair to a "reconnaissance" mission about a guerrilla group seriously vandalizing a new Jedi outpost. The thinking is that Core-world attention might just bear fruit in the strained relationship with the native people. After all, Obi-Wan is a minor celebrity among the Jedi. They don't seem to consider that Sith-slayer might not matter as a title to these people.

"Worrying, it is," Yoda said, speaking not of that but other galactic matters, because Master-now-Count Dooku is apparently talking about splitting off from the Republic. And Anakin agrees--to not to would look suspicious and verge on betrayal of the Chancellor, but he isn't entirely sure it's such a bad thing. After all, the Republic tolerates slavery and the underworld of Coruscant. Shady trading and illicit orgies might be one thing, but there are people who live and die miserably in the dark shadows of the Core world, and it's something apparent to even a Jedi Padawan avoiding seedier areas. If a say in government is one of the core tenets of the Republic, then perhaps it makes sense for it to be smaller--perhaps then it could accomplish more in dealing with these things. Anakin, so often the stranger to others, has little sympathy for the view that it would make for strangers among them and strange galactic bedfellows.

They spend weeks in the muck of a rainy season, conditions made worse by the bared land stripped of its normal groundcover. Nothing turns up until, as they are about to leave, they get word in a tavern that Dooku has kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine and is holding him on the Count's native world of Serreno.

* * *

If he can kidnap the Supreme Chancellor, Obi-Wan says quietly, as they lay down to get some preparatory sleep while in hyperspace, there probably isn't much chance that the Jedi haven't heard about it and a message won't be helpful without, say, reconnaissance. They've been closer to Serreno on the mission than Coruscant is, and closer to it than to Coruscant, so they'll go.

And they get in.

"Anakin Skywalker," Dooku says, looking at him. "Lay down your weapons and come with me."

The invitation hasn't been extended to Obi-Wan, but, looking worried, he nods.

Anakin cannot believe the sight that awaits him in the hospital room where Dooku personally brings him: it is both worse and far better a sight than he had dared to imagine.

The patient's head is above the bacta tank, but only just, and the facial injuries probably need treatment. One arm floats limply, wrongly with a curve where no human arm should have one. The other bears a large burn. For modesty, the patient has on a loose short top within the bacta, which reveals deep, nasty looking scratches over the abdomen. The foot opposite the broken arm looks more like pulp than a foot, and the knee above it bends as it most definitely shouldn't. Worst but also best of all, this deeply injured person is most definitely Anakin's mother, Shmi Skywalker.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...before we get any further, maybe I should warn you that this story (which hopefully shouldn't be too much longer) isn't actually headed for a happily ever after Padme/Anakin ending, if you were looking for that. 
> 
> The ending will be... more pleasant than not, I think, but it will also be a complicated place emotionally and politically...

"She's your mother, isn't she?" Dooku quietly asks as they stand there, Anakin in awful awe of the sight of the bacta tank.

"Yes," and Anakin finds that's all he can say in the moment, struck dumb by the state in which he has finally once more found his mother. 

Then the awful thought occurs to him: "Did you do this to her?"

Dooku chuckles once, wryly and with no humor. "I'm only responsible for the bacta tank. And maybe one or two bruises--it was hard getting her up here."

A hundred half-formed thoughts he cannot put words to are clamoring for attention, although his greatest urge, kept just submerged by the training he's had regarding medical equipment, is to touch and comfort his mother in any way possible. Their tie is still so strong...

Some of the thoughts coalesce: Is he ever going to get to talk to her again? Will she ever walk, see the binary sunset, sing, hug him again? How bad are the injuries?

And, asks a part of him that speaks with Master Yoda's ever-judging voice, who did this? Especially if he is to believe that Dooku did not... 

He has not hated the man yet, as he thinks the other Jedi, concluding that the Serrenoan has Turned, do. But if there is a question (and there is) about how he's treated Shmi, and since he's kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine, one of Anakin's friends, Anakin cannot quite think neutrally of him again in this moment.

Only, that second surer basis comes into focus as Palpatine walks into the medbay. The politician looks little worse for the wear, aside from a weary and irritated expression and ill-fitting clothing. 

"You _kidnapped_ me," he declares, almost in disbelief, and without noticing Anakin.

"Yes," Dooku replies, neutrally. The captive the two Jedi have come to rescue does not appear to be under restraints.

Some sort of whimper comes from the bacta tank, but Anakin cannot make out if Mom intends words. It is still far more interesting to him than whatever odd and generally attention-worthy thing is happening between the ex-Jedi and the politician, and he rushes towards her. There are some more sounds and movements behind him, but aside from a passing wish that Dooku will not harm his friend, Anakin doesn't pay attention.

A few moments later, Palpatine is at his side. "Anakin," he says gently. 

"This is my mother," Anakin frantically whispers.

His friend's voice is pained, "I know."

"Ani," comes a whisper through cracked lips, barely audible on this side of the bacta tank's walls, and his heart feels like it's breaking. 

Dooku's voice breaks through the well of emotion. "Please give her a little water. I know you prefer not to give oral hydration in these cases, but communication will probably speed healing. And I suppose there's nothing we can do about opening her eyes at the moment?"

"Yes, you are correct, Master Dooku," a soothing mechanical voice that must belong to a meddroid replies. It floats into view and ascends the side of the bacta tank with a small cup of water, which it extends to his mother's mouth. "Some of the medications being administered tend to cause vomiting in conjunction with the bacta."

"You can't give her medicine that doesn't do that?" Anakin asks indignantly, feeling very much like a little boy. Palpatine puts one hand on Anakin's arm and strokes his thumb back and forth in a soothing gesture.

"Ani," Shmi says more clearly, "you're here?"

"Yes, Mom, I'm here," and without realizing it, he has begun to cry, tears trickling down his cheeks.

Dooku walks up beside them and the tank and comments "I had to get him here. Though I might just as soon prefer having Kenobi alone."

Palpatine huffs indignantly, and lets go of Anakin's arm, but then regains equilibrium of tone. "Madame Skywalker--" he begins, only to be hushed by the droid.

"I am sorry to disagree with you, Master Dooku, but too much demand for communication may stress the patient." the meddroid told them.

"Will she be all right?" Anakin asks.

"Shmi Skywalker has no intractable injuries. There is some uncertainty in the degree of healing possible in her broken foot, and some scars may remain, but major improvements can be expected. Once further medical supplies arrive, you can expect that additional treatment will help her eyes improve quickly."

Anakin exhales sharply. Mom will, it sounds like, mostly heal. He feels a bit funny for weeping in front of the Chancellor and an ex-Jedi who taught Qui-Gon Jinn, but it also couldn't be helped. Now it's a matter of straightening out what to do about Mom being here, and the kidnapping thing, neither of which is probably easy to deal with, but at least Shmi is alive and healing and, possibly, in little danger here.

"I'd like to explain to your son how you came to be here, but he is welcome to stay at this establishment for as long as he likes," Dooku announces evenly.

Shmi thanks him unsteadily, and he bids the Force be with her.

* * *

They exit the room: the Fallen Count who leads a seditious movement but just showed some considerable kindness to Shmi, the Jedi's so-called Hero With No Fear who is still holding back tears over his mother, and the Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, who is not acting as Anakin is sure kidnapping victims normally do but _is_ being a supportive friend.

General Grievous (whom Anakin remembers is some sort of minor warlord, more than half of whose body was replaced with cybernetic parts, and now a major leader of the C.I.S. forces) interrupts, before any of the three can say anything else and get to explanations.

"An Owen Lars and Beru Whitesun here to see you, Count." Grievous says to Dooku.

But Palpatine bursts out, very much as if he has not thought before speaking, "What are _they_ doing here?" The names are meaningless to Anakin.

"I suspect you tend to underestimate most beings' attachments to their families," Dooku responds dryly.

This comment is confusing and seemingly contextless to the younger Jedi. Anakin can see this Lars and Whitesun behind Grievous, and they appear to be from Tatooine, but he doesn't remember them, or their names.

"Give us back Shmi Skywalker!" the one who must be Beru demands impulsively. And Anakin has no idea who she is to be demanding his mother. One of the people who inflicted the injuries, if Dooku is to be believed? A slaver who owns her now? She doesn't look either of those things--in fact she reminds him of how he'd like to think Shmi might have looked before he was born, except perhaps less care-worn.

Dooku studies her. "You're welcome to look in on her--you might have to convince the meddroid--but I can't allow you to remove her, for reasons of health, as yet."

Owen, the other one, says hoarsely and plainly, "Why'd you want to doctor her here? So you can get a ransom out of us? We're moisture farmers. It took most of our savings to get us here. My father saved up ten years to pay off the rest of her redemption price." This is ...odd news to Anakin. Mom has been ...freed?

Dooku stares at Palpatine expectantly, as though there is some other context, and Anakin's friend says, with a slight offense that is very much affected, "For once, there was nothing political about it."

"Nothing political? Do you know nothing about Tatooine? It's for political reasons they took her--" Beru begins, but Palpatine interrupts with a pointed look at his kidnapper.

"That may be, but I think it has been a misunderstanding as much as anything else."

"I'll say. You Core-worlders come busting in and think the enforcement already allotted to us is going to solve the slavery problem. Well, it hasn't and it won't. You're underestimating the Hutts."

The two political leaders in the room exchange a seemingly baffled look. Anakin, also getting confused, can't blame them. What is so political about his mother, but what could his friend the politician have to do with it? And what does she mean about "solving the slavery problem"? By Core-worlders and their enforcement?

"I think you're talking at cross purposes," Obi-Wan interjects calmly and quietly.

"Who did you mean, they took her?" Grievous asks, in that raspy voice. And the young Jedi listens intently for that answer.

Owen answers. "The Tuskans. But I don't know why he took her from them." Why the Tuskans? Why would Mom have anything to do with them? 

"Sir. Their assessment is correct." This new intruder is wearing the clothing of Tatooine, but her accent and a lack of sun in her complexion suggest she isn't from there.

"I take it you couldn't extract her from the situation with the subtlety I expect from you?" Palpatine addresses her familiarly.

"Sir, I didn't wish to cause an incident with the Count and General here." But they're not in charge of Tatooine, Anakin thinks fervently, still silent. Were they trying to take it over for their rebellion? 

Now Palpatine is astonished and demands of Dooku (for reasons quite opaque to Anakin) " _You_ went to Tatooine?!"

"It seemed advisable at the time. After all, Anakin Skywalker is from the planet."

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and, if I've actually answered any of those questions I said I would, I think I've raised or suggested even more. ;) 
> 
> But they will be revealed. Soon. At least maybe you're happy to know that Shmi will probably be more or less okay.
> 
>  
> 
> ~~Actually, I wasn't planning for Beru and Owen to appear when I posted the last chapter, and their arrival delayed some of the explanation--but I think they will make that discussion more interesting and well rounded.~~

**Author's Note:**

> Some songs:
> 
> "Gentle Wounds" OTR  
> "Moth" OTR  
> "Dreams" Fleetwood Mac  
> "Truth #2" Dixie Chicks  
> "Songs Sung Blue" Neil Diamond  
> "Ship to Wreck" Florence + the Machine  
> "Viva La Vida" Coldplay  
> "Spaceman" The Killers
> 
> ( _"A tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."_ -C.S. Lewis)


End file.
